With the heart-shaped clocking ticking away and time left for finding the perfect Valentine’s Day gift winds down, Rogers County procrastinators will descend en masse tonight on flower shops, clog the Hallmark aisles in Wal-Mart and otherwise attack any store that sells valentines with a feeding-frenzy-like fervor.

Here’s the thing ...

My own sweetheart and I are going on 21 years together — by a fortunate coincidence, my sweetheart also has been my wife for 19 of those 21 years — and after seeing more than a few Saint Val’s Days go into the history books together, there are few “first” gifts left to be given. We’ve long surpassed “first” flowers, “first” home-written love poems, “first” heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, “first” jewelry ... I can’t say that I remember giving her a “first” all-expenses paid luxury cruise to the Bahamas, but I’m saving that one for my next raise.

This Valentine’s Day however, my sweetheart/wife and I will be marking an unexpected “first” — something outside the usual trappings of chocolate and Cupid, outside flowers and musical cards that play “Wild Thing” and embarrass one of us (OK, me) in the workplace.

This year will be our first Valentine’s Day to get stoned.

It bears mentioning that my sweetie will be spending Valentine’s Eve at St. John’s Hospital in Tulsa, where, if all goes as planned, she’ll be having a pesky Valentine’s Day kidney-stone removed.

While not entirely traditional (or preferred), the kidney stone-themed Valentine’s Day will certainly be a first for us both.

She found out only last weekend that she’s the proud — and agonizing — owner of not one but two stones, the first still taking up space in her right kidney, the second — and this is the one she’s going to the hospital for today — trying to unsuccessfully work its way through her system.

While only four by seven millimeters may not sound like much, for a kidney stone, it’s apparently (if I remember what the doctor called it) “ginormous.” In layman’s terms, having a kidney stone of that size is tantamount to trying to pass a bowling ball. Or give birth to a baby, if that baby was twice times its normal size and had calcified, jagged edges.

The removal of said Valentine’s Day kidney stone (now stay with me here) will involve the usage of a telescope-thingy into her whatsit, and using a laser-deal to break up the stone. A stint-thing will be put in to allow the stone to pass through. Sorry about all the medical jargon.

Needless to say, this Valentine’s Day, we most likely won’t be going out for dinner, although if she doesn’t get released today, we might share a romantic bowl of hospital Jell-O by candlelight, and I’ll see if there’s a resident on staff who knows how to play the violin.

If she is released, I’m sure the day will be spent more on painkillers and soft pillows than Lady Godivas and moonlit carriage rides. Given the circumstances, Valentine’s cards and/or gifts may be postponed until she’s feeling better (unless she passes a heart-shaped kidney stone — now THAT would definitely be a “first”).

The point is, whatever happens, it’s fine with me, so long as we’re together.

I know how she feels about me and I’m fairly confident that she knows how I feel about her, which is much more than an annual “Get Out of Being an Unromantic Lout Free” card by way of red hearts and chocolate — it’s about being there for each other the other 364 days of the year that aren’t Feb. 14. Valentine’s Day isn’t just “the” day we care for each other, it’s “a” day we care for each other, otherwise, it would be a long, dry spell between expressing how much we mean to each other.